January 2011 - Blackherbals.com

Continued from page 50 – Rape Epidemic fuels Fistula Cases inThroughout the conflict women have been brutalized byrape and sexual violence. An estimated 200,000 women andgirls have been assaulted over the past 12 years, with morethan 18,000 cases reported between January and September2008. This past May, the U.S. Senate foreign relationscommittee held a hearing to address how rape is being usedas a weapon of war in the DRC.Physical TraumaOften this rape takes on extremely violent forms and cancause injuries to a woman’s reproductive organs. Forinstance, it can cause a health condition called vaginalfistula, which happens when the wall between a woman’svagina and the bladder and/or rectum tears. Also calledtraumatic fistula when caused by sexual violence, it’s hardto know how many women in the DRC have this condition.But it’s been estimated that thousands of Congolese girlsand women have been impacted, and one assessment of sixDRC provinces found that out of 432 fistula cases, around14 percent were because of trauma.Jim Bliss, blogging on The Quiet Road, elaborates on thesituation. He says: In the rest of the world the condition[fistula] generally occurs due to serious complicationsduring childbirth.Most gynecologists and obstetricians will go their entirecareer without ever encountering a single case. In DRC,however, there’s an epidemic. And it’s not down to anincrease in complicated births.Many of the militias in DRC have adopted a deliberatepolicy of terror through mass rape…However rape – evenviolent rape – does not as a rule cause fistula. No, insteadthe militiamen, having already gang-raped the woman(often a huge number of times over a period of weeks ormonths) will deliberately inflict major damage to hergenitals before sending her back to her village. More oftenthan not this is achieved by carefully shooting the woman’svagina at point-blank range…Knives, broken glass or justsharp sticks are [also] used to cause as much damage aspossible. Girls as young as 12 months have been subjectedto this violence.Medical complications for women with fistula can includebeing permanently incontinent, infertility, miscarriages, andother health problems. On top of this, women with fistulaoften face stigma because of their status as a rape victim, aswell as their chronic incontinence.Treatment and health careMany wounded women are unable to get treatment, butthere are some medical centers that treat rape-relatedinjuries, including fistula. One such center is the PanziHospital in Bukavu, which was created in 1999.Surgeons at the hospital performed 540 fistula repairsin 2005, 80 percent of which were due to sexualviolence. In this video, a psychologist at the PanziHospital shows what life is like for women seekingtreatment for traumatic fistula.Endre Vestvik visited the hospital and took a series ofphotos of women and girls being treated for fistula.This is a photo of 4-year-old Vitonsi, who is preparingfor fistula surgery. She was raped by soldiers whentrying to cross the river with her pregnant mom and hersister.Hope for the futureDespite the positive work being done by thesehospitals, Emin Pasha, blogging on Congo Resources,felt highly discouraged after learning more about sexualviolence in the DRC.Little is being done about the problem, despite the factthat rape in eastern Congo has become such a wellknownand well-publicized problem. Research on thetopic remains preliminary; there are still only a handfulof clinics and hospitals addressing the needs of thewomen; police and local authorities still don’t have anycapacity or willingness to protect the population; andoverall it appears that the problem is getting worse notbetter.Still, Brad MacIntosh, blogging on A wide-angle viewof the DRC conflict, says his visit to the Panzi Hospitalin June gave him a glimmer of hope.It is hard to describe all the emotions as I walkedthrough the open corridors of the hospital complex on awarm and sunny day. I headed towards the operatingtheatres and found that the second building is now fullyoperational. This operating theater is for surgical repairof women who have survived rape. Surgeries areperformed by the head fistula surgeon, a gentle andwise doctor named Dr Yunga who I met previously.Beyond this building is a beautiful courtyard wheresurvivors of rape have a place to call their own, wherethey have workshops, sing, cook and learn skills…Ihave seen evidence of remarkable progress at PanziHospital. Layers of progress in fact, which leads me toconclude it is a place of immense potential andoptimism in city that has seen too much despair.http://www.conversationsforabetterworld.com/2010/01/rapeepidemic-fuels-fistula-cases-in-the-democratic-republic-ofcongo/http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/07/29/drc-rape-epidemicfuels-fistula-cases/☻☻☻☻☻☻-51- Traditional African Clinic January 2011